NHRA: Chevrolet Notes and Quotes, Pomona
16 November 1999
Posted By Terry
Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
FUNNY CAR -- CAMARO Z28 -- ELIMINATIONS
JERRY TOLIVER, WWF RACING CORVETTE, defeated John Force in the final round to win his first Funny Car title in a tire-smoking, pedaling contest to the finish. Toliver recovered at the top half and took the win with a 6.717-second elapsed time at 300.33 mph over Force's 8.897/122.31.
RON CAPPS, COPENHAGEN CAMARO Z28, lost to Dale Creasy, Jr., in the second round, when Capps' Cope Camaro lost traction and shook its tires. Capps tried to pedal it to the finish, but wasn't in time, as he crossed the line in 7.103 seconds at 136.23 mph to Creasy's 5.730/243.85. In the first round, Capps eliminated Al Hofmann, who was inched out by less than three hundredths of a second, as Capps cruised to a 4.970/291.89 pass to Hofmann's 5.045/295.14.
CAPPS: "The first run wasn't even that good. It put a cylinder out. We thought we could run better. Ace (Ed McCulloch) and Todd (Okuhara) were pretty upset that we backed it off as much as we did on that 4.97 run. It's all hindsight. After the run we figured the track could have taken a bit more. In the second run we underestimated the track again because the Camaro shook and when it shook so bad, it shook the tires loose. We didn't go up there and blow the tires off because we were too aggressive. It was quite the opposite of that. I gave it a pedal, but it was already beating me up inside; it was hard to recover. I was trying to catch him, I wasn't giving up. We have all winter to fix the car if we went sideways. It would have been great to win. The guys were disappointed because they knew we should have won the race and that's encouraging going into next year. The way we ended the year, with the Camaro running the way it is, there's no reason why we can't win races next year and win the championship." ON ED McCULLOCH: "Ace is a real racer. Obviously he showed what kind of driver he was in the past. It's a lot of fun, he comes to talk to me in the cockpit before the burnout, we shake hands and he tells me what he thinks the car is going to do. He knows what I'm thinking in the car. That comes from his experience. He reminds me a lot of how Roland Leong tuned the car and it's very consistent. He showed a lot of consistency with Doug Kalitta's car. I'm really excited to take what we have now and go straight to testing in January. Contrary to what we did in the beginning of this year, we are not going to get crazy with this stuff. We know what we have now and it's good enough to win races." ON NEW 2000 CAMARO BODIES: "We have new 2000 Camaro bodies coming this winter. Another exciting aspect will be to spend some time in the GM wind tunnel learning more about this Camaro body. We feel that this Camaro body -- and it showed in the heat of the day when it ran 4.80 -- is as good as it can be. It's that way because a lot of people from GM, all the way to Don Prudhomme have worked very, very hard to make this body as good as or better than John Force's Mustang."
WHIT BAZEMORE, KENDALL OIL/SUPERWINCH CAMARO Z28, went out in the first round against Scotty Cannon: 5.513/270.871 for Cannon; 6.319/259.86 for Bazemore.
BAZEMORE: "It's been very frustrating, because the problem is not in the tune-up. Tim Richards and the entire Kendall Camaro team are too good to make a mistake like we did today. There's something going on in our race car, and I think we have an idea what it probably is. It's just a matter of testing and getting it resolved, which we hope to do in the off-season. What makes today's result even harder is that our opponent didn't run that well. But in this sport, your car has to be at least 90% there if you want to have a shot at winning, and ours was probably around 10%. At least this time it was able to hook back up, which it didn't do in Houston two weeks ago. But, to be honest, my thoughts are with the family of the parachutist who had the accident here today. It's things like that which make our racing seem insignificant."
Editors Note: To view hundreds of hot racing photos
and art, visit
The Racing
Photo Museum and the
Visions
of Speed Art Gallery.